Do you spend a lot of time in a terminal? I do… easily 80% of my “productive” time (e.g. not watching Stargate) is gazing into xfwm4-terminal.

Lets look at some scenarios: (I assume you want to ssh in more than once a week.)

Let’s imagine I’m away from home, at a buddy’s, and all he has is Windows. Simple right? Download PuTTY! (or bring it on a USB key. There is a portable version) Or wait, is there a better option? Yes, which brings me to my next scenario:

Suppose this Windows machine is at… say, your local electronics store, or you simply cannot download a program for whatever reason?

Well, as long as you have Internet access to your server, you can use ShellInABox! This awesome server side software allows you a mostly functional ANSI/VT100 or Wyse 60 terminal.

The man page is fairly straightforward. You install the product to your webserver, and point a specific port to it, and set it to run as either a background service (I recommend this), or as an on-demand CGI (which uses less resources, but has to spin up. If your box is thrashing, this can take a while.)

Alright, you say… What about on my phone?

Well, if you have an iPhone, I don’t. Sorreh…

As for Android, there is a bevy of awesome software. I currently use ConnectBot and irssi ConnectBot (since I chat on IRC with Irssi, I find it makes sense to have a terminal client that allows me to use the control keys within Irssi without butchering my usual xterm controls.)